Prism
by the-fabulous-Jai
Summary: Yet another hapless Allen-joins-the-Noah fic. AU/post-canon based on the anime. Slow burn Poker Pair plus background pairings. Allen is trans, as he is in all my fics.
1. good times on front street

_This fic is crossposted on AO3 at /works/18196955/chapters/43044518. Chapter 1 title from "Front Street" by Will Wood and the Tapeworms._

...

Tyki Mikk smells like gasoline and roses today, and Allen can't help but fall.

It's different every day- he doesn't know where Mikk finds all those colognes, or if maybe the Earl buys them. _(Wow, that's a weird thought. He can just imagine it, the fucker in his top hat asking if the Noah would prefer cherries or oranges.)_

_(He wonders, sometimes, what Mikk's mouth tastes like. He imagines violet and blue, since that's usually how he smells.)_

Allying with the Noah family did not go as expected; rather than a prisoner, he is treated as a guest. An honored guest, with a floor of their building to himself. _(He wonders what Mikk is up to right now, there on the third floor. Probably asleep already- oh, shit, it's late.)_

Allen meditates until he can pretend he's gotten some rest, and goes down to eat at five in the morning.

.

Tyki Mikk smells like sawdust today, woodsy and dry-deep, and Allen kind of wants to sniff him. Not that he would- that'd be weird. Mikk's probably straight, the bastard.

Allen puts it out of his mind (mostly) and gets ready for Weapons Training (Thursdays, ten A.M., mandatory for all but the Earl who usually comes anyway. He was excused from the last two, but since he started training this week, he's there for every class. And it really is like a class.)

The rest of the Noah are lined up against the padded wall, and he takes his place next to Nea. It's odd talking to someone who he first met as a hallucination/imaginary friend in his head, but they get along surprisingly well.

"So, what happens today?"

"The twins teach this one." Nea rolls his eyes at Allen's expression. "They're surprisingly good teachers, though, and they've got plenty of experience with weaponry. We're not allowed to use our powers."

"I'll manage." Allen fishes out the amulet that blocks his powers- and Innocence- from his pocket. The twins created that for him, too.

His attention is diverted from thoughts on the amulet's design by Jasdero clearing his throat. "Alrighty, you fuckers, today we're starting DAGGERS." Devit joins in, and they speak together. "Allen, you weren't here when we did switchblades, but you should be fine for this-"

and it's just Devit speaking now, "But we'll check on you a bit extra-"

both of them again- "So that you don't bleed all over-"

Jasdero: "the nice-"

both of them, the fuckers, "training floor."

_(In a whisper to Nea: "Do they have to do that?")_

_("Devit admitted to me once in another incarnation that they enjoy 'fucking with the heads of the weak,' so I'd assume so, yes.")_

.

It's all practical exercises, and Allen's done most of it before, albeit in slightly more real situations. Learning to fight out of necessity as a child gave him instincts that couldn't leave him if they tried, and the physical exertion of the last few years have left him strong and mostly healthy. He throws, and the dagger hits the center of the target on the first try.

There's a short break for lunch, in which he gobbles down six helpings of stew while Nea averts his eyes, and then they're back at it.

.

One in the afternoon, sparring. He's paired first with Lulu Bell, who beats him by one point.

"I was a homeless lesbian in France," she says by way of explanation when he remarks upon her skill, to which he replies, "I was homeless and transgender in England." They agree to meet for tea and swapping stories at four.

.

Next, he's paired with Wisely, who's got an amulet of his own that keeps him from reading Allen's mind. _("I honestly wish I could wear it all the time, but apparently my powers would break the thing and render it useless after more than a day. Jasdevi said my daily limit is eight hours. It did cut down the headaches, though.")_ Wisely has also been homeless and can fight as well as Allen can, so it doesn't much matter. Allen beats him by two points.

.

He's paired with Mikk and told to go easy on him, since he hasn't had much experience in this.

"Ready, set, go!" says Devit, and the pairs are starting up. Then there's a knock on the door, and all is silent.

.

Really, it's almost comical how quickly everyone stops. Blades are dropped to the floor, heads turn, and when the door opens to reveal an Akuma servant you can hear a pin drop.

She calls the Earl out, and he leaves, and there is something very _very_ wrong because there's a standing rule not to interrupt training sessions unless it's an absolute emergency.

The door opens once more, and the Earl's face pokes out. "Allen, m'boy, could you come out here for a minute?"


	2. this is the murmur of the land

_Title from "The Wisp Sings" by Winter Aid._

...

When Allen left the Order, he was seventeen and tired. Sad. Maybe a little bit suicidal. How else could he be, with the knowlege that his friends believed him lost, with the monster growing in his soul?

He'd spent that year on the run, conning rich fuckers out of their money and picking pockets until he had enough belongings of his own to fill a bag.

In the summer, he bought a few glass jars and some herbal tinctures from an apothecary. He filled those jars very slowly with his own blood, drained over the course of that year; and by the time January rolled around again, they were full enough for him to dump the blood and a few choice items near the American branch's headquarters, plus a few pieces of skin from his arm. Timcampy was adopted by a little girl in Massachusetts.

It worked; they stopped looking for him.

.

At eighteen, he gambled his way through France and then Spain. He spent two full months in the Basque region, developing a taste for wine and attending local events; he didn't steal a thing the whole time, because he managed to get a temporary casino job.

The casino had a piano, carved with snakes and smelling of booze. Nea, ever-present in his head, explained how the symbols on sheet music worked- real sheet music, not the language of Allen and Mana and the Noah- and by the time the job was done and they were shaking his hand and asking him to come back next season, he was almost competent at playing. (He tried not to dwell on that too much.)

.

November rolled around and he was back on foot.

November rolled around, and he was in Portugal. So were a few (obscenely wealthy) businessmen he'd cheated the year before.

There's not much to say- the businessmen were drunk, he was weaker than usual after skipping a meal and telling himself he'd eat at an inn or something, there was a confrontation, he denied ever having met them before, and their fists met his face, and then he was on the ground on the side of the road next to an old coal mine getting the shit kicked out of him. He fell into unconsciousness just as another figure approached the brawl, a figure with grey skin and a top hat.

.

He woke in what he would later know to be the Noah mansion.

.

After all that time on the run, it was beyond strange to see himself surrounded by such opulence.

He woke up to a feather-soft bed, blankets spread over him and blue wallpaper on the walls and the sheets smelling of cinnamon. Someone sat by the bed.

"I'll let Adam know you're up," said Tyki-fucking-Mikk, and Allen cursed his luck slightly more than usual. "Road and an Akuma attendant are making up a room for you right now. Ordinarily you'd be in our medical wing, but there was... an _incident_."

...

_Two Days Earlier_

footage from the Noah Mansion's surveillance system

**JASDERO:** I love vodka, man.

**DEVITT**: So much.

**JASDERO:** Hey, do you wanna go smash some stuff?

**DEVITT:** Nobody's in the medical wing right now-

**JASDERO:** And we can just rebuild it if it's needed again.

...

Allen considered finding some means of escape, but he was so very tired and there were aches in his body he hadn't noticed before. Also, the bed was really soft and he was warm and comfortable, which really was an underrated thing.

In life, sometimes you had to sit back and enjoy things.

Of course, he couldn't really enjoy it when a complete stranger opened the door and beamed at him. The stranger then proceeded to open his mouth and speak in a familiar voice: "Allen, m'boy. So glad you're awake. I'm sure you have questions?"

He wasn't quite sure what to say, and made a garbled noise that might have been a "what."

"Ah, my apologies. I'm the person you know as the Earl. This is my human form, which I use around the Noah."

"So..." Allen cleared his throat. "About that. I'm not a Noah. How'd I get here, anyway?"

"Well, first off- Nea woke up earlier. After a rather touching reunion with Road, the twins and I- you have met Jasdevi, right?- performed a ritual to separate him from you. It's happened a few times throughout history, and if you choose to stay you'll become one of us for one or two more reincarnations. Tyki found you getting beaten up on the side of a road near his human home in Portugal." The Earl's smile was inhumanly wide, but not quite as unsettling as on the weird penguin-with-a-top-hat Allen had seen before.

"Wait. How long was I out? What happened to Nea?"

"He's in his own room, having already had one. And you've been out for nearly two days, not counting the bit last night when we separated you and him."

Allen eyed the Earl warily. "Last I heard, he wanted to kill you."

The Earl chuckled. "Last he knew, I was planning on ending the world."

"Aren't you?"

"No. We want to rule it." The Earl paused, watching Allen's lack of response. "Some of my former incarnations weren't quite stable, and this one started out even less so. Anyway, if you become one of us, you'll be sick for a few days and then gain some sort of interesting ability, probably based in what you're already good at. Converts throughout history usually ended up with things like enhanced strength or agility, but none of them had Innocence."

"My Innocence was made to put Akuma out of their misery, Earl. Have you forgotten that we're on opposite sides here?"

"Oh, we don't make Akuma anymore the way you've heard of it. These days, we just resurrect the dead and be done with it- sometimes they take back their permission and we have to exorcise them, but with an actual Exorcist that'll be much easier." At Allen's incredulous look, he added, "Mercym had a moral crisis. And please, call me Adam."

Yeah, no. Okay, subject change time: "You said they're making up a room for me. Whose room is this?"

"Ah, this is Tyki's. Third floor. Speaking of which, is the fifteenth floor satisfactory?"

.

(Apparently Mikk kept up a human life in Portugal, the bastard. What right did he have to the world, when the Noah were going to destroy so much of it?)


End file.
